Abstract

The relationship between the ability to hear out partials in complex tones,discrimination of the fundamental frequency (F0) of complex tones, and frequency selectivity was examined for subjects with mild-to-moderate cochlear hearing loss. The ability to hear out partials was measured using a two-interval task. Each interval included a sinusoid followed by a complex tone; one complex contained a partial with the same frequency as the sinusoid, whereas in the other complex that partial was missing. Subjects had to indicate the interval in which the partial was present in the complex. The components in the complex were uniformly spaced on the ERBN-number scale. Performance was generally good for the two “edge” partials, but poorer for the inner partials. Performance for the latter improved with increasing spacing. F0 discrimination was measured for a bandpass-filtered complex tone containing low harmonics. The equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB) of the auditory filter was estimated using the notched-noise method for center frequencies of 0.5, 1, and 2 kHz. Significant correlations were found between the ability to hear out inner partials, F0 discrimination, and the ERB. The results support the idea that F0 discrimination of tones with low harmonics depends on the ability to resolve the harmonics.

Received 13 April 2011Revised 11 August 2011Accepted 16 August 2011Published online 16 November 2011

Acknowledgments:

This work was supported by the MRC (UK), Grant No. G0701870. We thank Denesh Srikantharajah, Niroshan Kumar, Anne Schleuter, and Kathryn Hopkins for gathering some of the data presented in this paper. We also thank Hedwig Gockel, Laurent Demany and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.